creep

Things keep creeping up on me...

I thought book club was next week, it was yesterday. 

I thought I was doing a Zoom poetry reading for an event at Agnes Scott College on the 27th of October... nope; it was today. I managed to show up on time Zoom ready (silk blouse on top, tracksuit bottoms) and read ok, I think (at least from the kind comments people shared). 

Our Grand Canyon trip is next week. I don't know if I'm ready for this trip I've waited for all my life.

Pic: A screenshot of the reading from the organizer.

three weeks...

Today felt strange... a committee that usually meets every Friday cancelled a couple of meetings and met for the first time since the day I heard the news about Amma. It made me uneasy and it took me a long time to find my voice. 

And because I was already mourning At's ex when this happened, it feels like grief is escalating. On some level, I fear more is coming my way.

In my body I am silent. I hurt and now I'm constantly nauseous. 

So far, the only place I feel like myself is in the classroom. And student services. (By the end of the weekend, I'll have fulfilled my beginning-of-term obligations as advisor to three of four organizations. Or so I hope.)

here's to the mums

I'm guilty of trying to find signs everywhere right now. The cardinals and the namesake (whom Suzanne poetically called "kindness with your mother's name") are lovely.

Not so lovely that the local indie hardware store sign made me tear up a block before I got to work.

Their sign currently reads: "Mums are here. More in rear." 

For some reason this prosaic rhyme made me think for an instant that all the mums* were in the store and if I didn't see mine right away, I could expect to find her in the back. 

(I didn't grow up American, so grew up saying "mum" not "mom.")

Pic: I took this as an excuse to treat myself to some huge mums for the front porch. 

thunderbolts and lightning

J wrote in the comments that when she lost her mom, she felt outraged that the rest of the world continued on... that she was surprised the mail continued to be delivered. I feel that.

This thing feels like being struck by lightning repeatedly. There was a lightning strike in the neighborhood in the afternoon yesterday and it gave L a nosebleed, woke A from his post call nap, and did something to our circuit breakers.

Big A texted to say we didn't have water, and I was so blasé about it... like quite unconcerned. It's as if I'm already in a private apocalypse of my own, so of course I expect that things like water and electricity are going to fail...

The emergency plumber came out late last night and fixed it in under half an hour. 

Pic: L's photo of the strike next door.

Apa Shakunam

"Inauspicious." 

The day I took my mom to the airport, I wrote about finding a four-leafed clover to pack for good luck. I didn't write about how my mom promptly lost it. I found an older one I had squirreled away for her to take. 

But the more I think about it, the more it feels like that was a foreshadowing of her hospital visit and everything else to come. 

I wonder what else I missed.

the next time I see you

I guess I'm at that stage where I'm telling random people that my mom died.  As I was checking in my luggage at the airport, the desk attendant asked why my suitcase was so heavy and I told her it had my mom's saris. Then I started sobbing. And then to make it less awkward, I explained that my mom had passed away. Super awkward. This young person, who couldn't have been more than 25, touched my arm and said gently: "It might seem like she's not here anymore, but she's always with you. So I helpfully cried harder.

I saw the same attendant at the gate too, and when she came up to me, I bashfully said something like--hi, look I'm not crying anymore. And she said "Ma'am, the next time I see you, you'll be strong and happy." I was so moved by her goodwill, I asked for her name, thinking I would write a note commending her kindness. 

It was Lakshmi. Mom's name. 

________

Pic: My mom's favorite sibling, her only brother, gave me this life-size blonde, blue-eyed doll who shut her eyes when you laid her down when I was a baby. I didn't play with her much, but "Sofia" became quite famous amongst my friends... for instance, the kid who's in the first photo with me wanted to take a photo with Sofia. My dad thought it would be hilarious to use my sister in the next picture as a switcheroo.

Another one from mom's archive.

I guess she doesn't live here anymore

The morning's Hindu ceremony for this 16th day was very serious. I was terrified of messing up something small like tying a knot wrong in the darba grass or making an offering in the wrong cardinal direction and endangering my mom's welfare in the next realm. So I extra loved the part when my mom was entrusted to her mom and grandmother for the journey, with the priest calling out their formal names and clan names.

This afternoon was the celebration of her life. It was a party mom would have loved, except for the fact that she very certainly wasn't there. If she doesn't live here anymore, I wonder where she is. And also, although I was the one who came up with the idea of "celebrating her life" I ended up being a very wet blanket--the kind who cries all the time.

It was the first time I was seeing people outside of family, and every time someone said something kind or I spied a sweet picture of her face on the slideshow, I was a puddle. At one point I was clutching neighbors I hadn't seen decades and sobbing into their shoulder. (They meant to visit dad on Wednesday, but had hurried down to say goodbye to me as I leave at the end of the day and they didn't want to miss me. So although their words were fairly standard--"we all lost a good friend"-- it seemed so fucking poignant in the moment.)

My mom's cousin with whom she had a lot of adventures made me laugh when she said an old (male) colleague of my sister's was a "rugged beauty." We got a lot of mileage out of that for the rest of the afternoon. Another cousin was addressed by a completely different--and made up--name by the security guard, and we all used that name for her for the rest of the afternoon as well. I guess, we all needed to regress/recoup a bit. 

Pic: A picture of the celebration a friend shared with me.